A method for evaluating nanoparticle transport through the blood-brain barrier in vitro

Blood-brain barrier (BBB) represents a formidable barrier for many therapeutic drugs to enter the brain tissue. The development of new strategies for enhancing drug delivery to the brain is of great importance in diagnostics and therapeutics of central nervous system (CNS) diseases. In this context, nanoparticles are an emerging class of drug delivery systems that can be easily tailored to deliver drugs to various compartments of the body, including the brain. To identify, characterize, and validate novel nanoparticles applicable to brain delivery, in vitro BBB model systems have been developed. In this work, we describe a method to screen nanoparticles with variable size and surface functionalization in order to define the physicochemical characteristics underlying the design of nanoparticles that are able to efficiently cross the BBB.